Los Angeles history

Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, April 6, 1941

April 6, 1941: Tom Treanor writes about a captured Messerschmitt 110 fighter that is being examined by Vultee engineers. The workmanship is first-class, the Vultee engineers say.

At Lockheed, “We took a look at the early P-38s and they are certainly more vicious to the eye than the Messerschmitt. With their two skinny booms, as they call the rakish fuselages, double tails, evilly slanted wings and sinister little glass coop for the pilot, they look like the real killers of the sky. There's something more modern, advanced and devilish in their lines than in the comparatively simple Messerschmitt, poor thing,” Treanor says.

The country is virtually at war. Its defense efforts are being hamstrung by unjustified strikes, uncooperative industrialists and blathermouthed, spotlight-hunting politicians. The average man in America has, with excellent reason, such a deep distrust of inefficient nincompoops in public office that his patriotism is in danger of being poisoned by his distrust, Jimmie Fidler says.